Month: October 2017

After what to me seems long consideration, but will seem like a bolt from the blue to my reader, I’m about to do two (one and a half?) out of three. This time the name won’t change, and my intention is that the active URL of the blog will once again be what it has been.

There are steps involved, however, and the first of these is that I let it be known what the temporary URL is.

New posts will now appear at (see update below), while the entries posted before today are here. Before I move the domain, the current URL will redirect here — hopefully with paths intact.

Update: I’ve moved the domain; the active blog’s base URL is once again http://ak4mc.us/tally/. These archives are now accessible only by their WordPress.com URL.

This will mean no more commenting on new posts, and the rotating quotes I only recently started displaying on this site will go away for good. I’ll save the quotes though. You may see them again.

Spain is to start suspending Catalonia’s autonomy from Saturday, as the region’s leader threatens to declare independence.

The government said ministers would meet to activate Article 155 of the constitution, allowing it to take over running of the region.

Catalonia’s leader said the region’s parliament would vote on independence if Spain continued “repression”.

Catalans voted to secede in a referendum outlawed by Spain.

Some fear the latest moves could spark further unrest after mass demonstrations before and since the ballot on 1 October.

Spain’s supreme court declared the vote illegal and said it violated the constitution, which describes the country as indivisible.

The secession vote may very well have been illegal, but so was our Declaration of Independence. Every signatory to that document could have been hanged for treason under the laws of Great Britain at the time. The United States has endured now for 241 years.

Many Americans say the Civil War “settled” the question of whether states can secede from the Union, conveniently overlooking that the United Colonies had successfully seceded from the British Empire less than a century before. I’ve said that legal questions cannot be settled by force — only the particular conflict at issue.

When a dispute among nation-states reaches the point of armed conflict, legal precedents covering it go out the window, never to return. By seeking to suppress Catalan independence in this manner, Spain risks accelerating its own disintegration.

The Nexus 6P is never going to be successfully upgraded to Oreo, is it? Just tell us. You want people to buy the new flagship phones after all, right?

The longer you let us believe the new version of Android will someday be coming to our two-year-old phones, the longer we’ll hold out on spending that money. So just admit it. You couldn’t find a way to make Oreo work on our phones.

Adobe Systems Inc warned on Monday that hackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in its Flash multimedia software platform in web browsers, and the company urged users to quickly patch their systems to prevent such attacks.

To which experienced web users respond,

Since — as Stephen Green is wont to say — Flash is malware masquerading as an interactive content platform, it only makes sense that someone would exploit it maliciously.

Since launching a promotional video earlier this month, under the title ‘You Won’t Believe Your Eyes’ the farm has received interest from across the world, including the UK.

Doug Leadley, farm manager and primary breeding adviser for Orrion, said: “This horse is a stepping stone to getting close to perfection” and US vets who have examined the colt says it has no medical or respiratory issues.

Yet.

Public reaction has been polarised with some people commenting that the horse looks beautiful while others have been horrified.

Anyone that can call that “beautiful” should turn in their Human card. (Poll voters at Althouse seem to agree, and not just when it comes to horses.)

Hollywood has demonstrated an amazing propensity for believing the problems are “out there” — out in middle America, where the audience lives — instead of within its own industry, actions, and behavior.

What it is, is, Hollywood assumes whatever horrible behavior happens there, must be happening everywhere. The flaw in that reasoning is that the entertainment industry attracts people who are more comfortable playing “let’s pretend” — where the consequences are elided in favor of manufactured closure.

“Out there,” consequences are real and endings are also beginnings and middles. Real people “live happily ever after” for about three minutes before life… goes on. No ending credits, no immediate negotiations for a sequel, no residuals. Just… more living, for those still alive.

In Hollywood, “more living” is what you base a sequel on. No sequel deal, no additional consequences.

That’s how Weinstein lived. It’s how everyone in Hollywood lives. Not knowing any better, it’s how they assume everybody lives.

That’s why they’re not fit to preach, even to those who live in that bubble, let alone to you and me.

Fremont County, Wyoming, has eight active school districts, twice as many as in any other Wyoming county. What’s more, it used to have, um, quite a few more than eight.

In Wyoming, the official name of a school district is “____ County School District #x,” even where the county has only one district, as some do. One of Fremont County’s districts has the official name, “Fremont County School District #38.” Obviously, at least 30 former school districts there no longer exist, having been absorbed by one or another of the eight that remain.

Since Fremont contains only about 10% of the state’s population, some of the districts have very small enrollment, which can become problematic in surprising ways.

(Ethete, Wyo.) – It was a numbers decision. In last Friday afternoon’s conference game against county rival Wind River, the Wyoming Indian Chiefs only suited up 14 players. One of those players was injured the game and didn’t return. With two games left in the schedule, the Chiefs simply ran out of players. Several of the team members were unavailable this week for this week’s game against Shoshoni, and the school decided to forfeit their last two games of the season, Friday night against Shoshoni and a week from Friday against Rocky Mountain.

Wyoming Indian High School serves Fremont County School District #14, based in the mostly Arapaho community of Ethete, north of Lander. It’s one of three school districts that mostly serve Wyoming’s only Indian reservation (which, contra TV’s “Longmire” and the books it’s loosely based on, is home to bands of Shoshone and Arapaho, not Cheyenne) and was until recently the only one of those three with an established conventional high school; students in the other districts could transfer to an adjacent district or attend a charter school if available.

I suppose some of WIHS’s previous success in at least fielding interscholastic sports teams may have been due to attendance from one or more adjacent districts that now have high schools of their own. The large number of districts in Fremont County has led to talk — almost none of it in Fremont County — of consolidating some of them.

It’s sad to see these kids having to give up the rest of their season, and it’s possible maybe there will be more recruits next fall. But if not, I’m not sure what can be done to rescue the program unless the two majority-Arapaho districts, at least, join forces.

Years ago the Georgia driver’s license process was an incandescent mess. (The fact I can remember those days tells you I’ve lived here a good while longer than I’d hoped to.) A lot has been done to ease the process since then, but today I went to the barber shop for a haircut and then headed to the license office to renew.

The barber shop was about as busy as it ever is; both haircutters were busy when I sat down.

When I went to the driver’s license office, I had taken advantage of something Georgia’s DMV-equivalent calls “Skip-A-Step,” where you can fill out your renewal application paperwork online, as much as 30 days ahead.

My wait at the barber shop was longer than my wait to see the clerk and hand over the documents I needed to bring to convince them I am who they say I am. I think the haircut even took longer than the license clerk took in getting me processed and out of there.

I’d been dreading this renewal because it was the first time I would need to comply with the “SecureID” requirements, but this was a breeze.

You know, the whole point of buying a Nexus phone was that it would be first in line for Android updates.

I’m still waiting for Oreo on my Nexus 6P, which Google made a point of announcing would be among the handsets getting the new version.

Apparently they rushed Oreo without making sure it would work on the 6P.

I’m tempted to call this a broken promise. It certainly doesn’t dispose me favorably toward a Pixel phone (hugely overpriced successor to the Nexus line) (Especially after I paid too much, in my opinion, for this 6P).